What do the jobless do when the benefits end?, By Ylan Q. Mui, February 11, 2014, Washington Post: “The end to federal jobless benefits for nearly 2 million people has sparked a bitter debate in Congress about whether Washington is abandoning desperate households or simply protecting strained government coffers. It is also providing real-time answers to a question economists have long pondered: How do people survive when they suddenly have no money coming in? Studies show that about a third of the people cut off from long-term unemployment benefits will find help from Social Security or other government programs. Others will cobble together dwindling savings or support from family. But most baffling to economists are the people who appear to come up with more-idiosyncratic solutions, which are tough to identify and almost impossible to track…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty